The Prices We Pay
by La Vik
Summary: Sequel to "Just Over Your Shoulder". A trip to Mort Rainey's hometown in Maine drags him and his fiancee, Carmen, into the path of Amy's family for the first time since Amy's death. When their desire for retribution drags Mort's faithfulness into question, his second chance at a happy marriage can only be preserved by seeking what he could never give: forgiveness.
1. Chapter 1

"Thank you so much, you two, you are _lifesavers_!"

Carmen Allen laughed dismissively at Melanie's overflowing gratitude for watching little Ryan. Truth be told, she _loved_ the little boy - despite the fact that he was drawing dangerously near his terrible two's and well on his way to earning the title. Ryan was, after all, her godson.

"We're sorry to ask this of you guys while you're in the middle of moving," said Rob, Carmen's longtime best friend. It was strange at times now for Carmen to think that he was _married_ to Melanie, the blonde-haired and blue-eyed sorority girl they'd roomed with in college - Carmen was surprised even more by how close she'd gotten to the other woman as well, considering how little she'd believed they had in common. But, given the events of recent years, a certain closeness was unavoidable, and more importantly, welcome in all of their lives. "It must be crazy -"

"It serves you right for waiting so long to move in together!" Melanie laughed, piping in while in the middle of playing with her son, having been separated from him for the entirety of one evening. It had Robert and Melanie's anniversary, so they'd asked Carmen and her fiancé, Mort Rainey, to watch their son for the evening.

Mort was probably most surprised of all - he had never honestly thought he'd be any good with children. The one time in the past he had even come close to being a father had ended… poorly, to say the least. But he no longer dwelled on that thought. That was a life before Carmen, another life entirely, and one he had no intentions of ever returning to.

"Thank you," Rob repeated for perhaps the fifth time that morning. "If there's anything we can do to repay you guys -"

"There is. Don't back out of being my best man," Mort chuckled, reaching out and giving the man a pat on the shoulder. "Because I literally have _no one_ else."

"Thanks," Rob deadpanned. "Nice to know I'm appreciated."

"I do what I can," Mort shrugged.

It was strangely _amazing_, living such a normal life again - and Mort very rarely let the opportunity to muse over it pass him by. For the past eight months since running into Carmen again in the Park and finally rekindling their relationship - their _engagement_ - he had enjoyed the low-key lifestyle he'd managed to procure. He had his home in Tashmore Lake and his flat in SoHo, he was able to write and sell perhaps more copies of his books than ever, and once Carmen was finally back in his life - back, without the shadow of John Shooter or any other past demons hovering over either of them - it seemed safe to say that things had simply fallen back into place.

Then, just a month ago while they were at Carmen's flat, sharing leftover pizza and looking for something to watch on TV, he had done it - he had asked her to move in with him. They'd been engaged for eight months now, after all, and it hardly seemed practical to live apart when they rarely spent nights away from one another anyway. It was practical. It was the most sensible thing for the two of them to do - and yet, Mort was beyond blown away when very casually, Carmen agreed.

So now, the living room was clean, tidy, and baby-proofed - but only because Carmen had insisted on shoving all of her boxes into the study and the bedroom to keep the area clear for Baby Ryan to play in when they watched him. Now that the place was baby-free, however, they were faced with the task of unpacking boxes. Thankfully, Carmen was not the type to hold on to too many things, so she came with a very minimal clutter factor - but the logistics of rearranging a home for one to become a home for two, especially a flat, were daunting nonetheless.

After an entire day of simply trying to figure out where to put things, Carmen was - as usual - the first to fall asleep. She'd tried to press Mort into simply calling it a day as well, but he insisted that since she had done the borne the brunt of watching Ryan, he could put in a little extra work unpacking.

It was while he was sitting the study, perusing some of the boxes of fiancée's things, that he noticed a notebook that looked a little bit like a diary. He didn't think Carmen the type. Glancing over his shoulder and holding his breath to make sure he could still hear the faint sound of her snoring from the bedroom, he pulled the notebook from the pile and flipped it open to a random page.

_...of course I'm not going to do it, she thought, though even the thought felt weak and truncated in her mind as though it hardly served to convince itself. But she had to be convinced. That was the point. It would be insane to run guns a-blazing to unearth some kind of a secret - literally - on a man she honestly barely knew._

_So why was she in the car in the dead of night, driving to his house?_

_Because Shooter told me to do it, she reasoned with herself. Shooter, who wasn't real. Shooter, who she had no reason to be seeing in her dreams at all, had told her to do it._

After reading a few more pages - a few dozen more pages, really - Mort realized two things. The first thing was that this was the entirety of the ordeal with Shooter from Carmen's perspective - Carmen, who in the end ultimately learned that John Shooter had been her father, and quite nearly got herself killed for it. This was every detail of those dark few months that Mort had yet to understand, because he had no recollection or knowledge of much of it.

The second thing was that it was very _good_.

Mort remembered once, when they had been on a trip to Cape Cod, they had been sitting on the beach and Carmen had asked him if he thought that she could ever write something someday. He'd thought she'd just been being cute, being affectionate – and so, he'd given her a cute and affectionate answer. If he'd have known she was actually _good_, he would have given her and honest answer - _yes_. He read a little bit more and came only to feel stronger about his initial conclusion: the story was amazing. Raw, rightfully haphazard in some places, but amazing.

From this, Mort next realized that he himself had never committed the story of John Shooter to paper in its entirety. He'd tried from time to time, but always found the story incomplete and filled with holes, just like his memory. The holes, he realized, were filled by Carmen's account. As much as he hated to remember any of it, it made so much more sense when combined with Carmen's narration of the events.

And the idea hit him.

Almost as though possessed, he hurried over to the bedroom where Carmen was sleeping and shook her awake like he was a child rushing to tell a parent that it was Christmas Day. After groggily rubbing her eyes for a short period, she groaned and looked up at her fiancé questioningly.

"Is something on fire?"

"We should write this story _together_. This is it, this is my next project."

Carmen's eyes widened when they adjusted to the light and she realized that Mort was brandishing her journal - the brown, leather-covered notebook that she had started keeping for some time in the two years she spent away from Mort before stashing it away with every intention of never looking at it again. While obviously shocked at being woken so suddenly, she understood immediately what Mort meant when she said that they should write it together. She sat up in bed and raised her eyebrows.

"Are you - _kidding_ me?"

She had never seen him this frenzied over a new idea - she'd seen him deep in thought, she'd seen him so intent on finishing that he tuned her out completely, but she'd never seen him like this.

"It's all here," Mort said, giving the journal a gentle shake. He realized now, however, that perhaps this wasn't something he should have wanted to make a project of. To him, sure, it was the past, but it was still very much Carmen's life. "I'm just - I'm asking you to let me use it. I've been hitting a dry spell lately and I think I could be on to something."

Carmen, for one, was completely dumbstruck by the proposal. They went to such pains to get past that part of their lives - the part that involved John Shooter - and yet Mort seemed so excited to relive it. A part of Carmen was afraid, admittedly, that there had to be something ominous about this, but the greater part realized that Mort valued _closure_. Closure mattered to him, and there was a difference between calling something over and truly having closure. She let out a small breath and nodded.

"If it helps, keep it," she said with a lopsided grin. "I haven't touched that thing in ages." Mort reached out and clasped his hands over hers.

"It's going to be big. It's going to be _great_," he said gently, leaning over and brushing his lips against her forehead.

"I believe you," Carmen laughed weakly. "Now - let me go to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"It's already the ninth," Carmen pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "You said we were going to Maine? For your mother's -"

"_Retirement party_. God, you're right," Mort groaned, running his hand over his forehead and through his hair. "We're leaving _tomorrow_ morning for that."

"That's right," Carmen chuckled, shaking her head. "And I finally get the grand introduction. I can't believe you forgot -"

"I've had other things on my mind." And suddenly, Mort was smiling wolfishly, climbing onto the bed next to Carmen and ardently claiming her lips with his own. Carmen responded by laughing breathily and pulling him closer so that their bodies were pressed together, and she fluidly maneuvered her way on top of him so that her hands were resting on his abdomen.

He could _definitely_ get used to this.

* * *

_A/N's_

_Slow chapter, but things will pick up quickly! Next chapter, we meet Mort's mother and another new face who will play an important role in the story. If you're a new reader, I recommend you run back to my author page and read Just Over Your Shoulder before this one. This story may have some slightly dark content, and might contain much less fluff - depends on what I decide to add. _

_In any case, happy reading and cheers!_


	2. Chapter 2

"Babe," Mort said as they made their way up the interstate. Carmen was, admittedly, half asleep in the passenger seat, so Mort took his hand off of the gear shifter and nudged her gently with the back of his knuckles until she stirred, shaking her head fervently and looked back at Mort with drowsy, bleary eyes.

"I'm awake."

"The drool on your chin says otherwise."

Carmen quickly jolted to complete wakefulness and pulled down the sun visor, tipping open the mirror and swiping at her face, only to realize that Mort had been bluffing and was now laughing heartily at her as she turned to glare playfully at him. He eventually allowed his laughter to die down, letting the car go quiet for a moment before asking his question. "Would now be a bad time to mention that I might have left out a couple details about my family?"

"_What_?"

"I - well, I actually have a lot of family," he said with a nervous grin, very purposefully keeping his eyes on the road to avoid the look of surprise he knew would be plastered across Carmen's face. "I don't speak with them much, but - you know. Aunts, uncles, the whole shebang. I'm not sure how many of them I'm actually related to -"

"Oh. _Those_ kinds of aunts and uncles," Carmen smirked. Though she was unfamiliar with what it felt like to _have_ extended family, she knew well enough that there were some people you knew for so long that it was just more useful to consider them family anyway. She'd grown that way with Rob's family, after all. "I'm sure they'll be great," she chuckled.

"They'll love you, I don't doubt that for a half a second," Mort assured. "But, well… my mother can be a little bit… eccentric."

"Mort, I'm really in no position to judge what _your_ parents are like," she reminded, raising her eyebrows gently. Mort bristled slightly, not out of any ill grudge harbored towards his fiance, but out of reflex. It was difficult to mention her _parents_ without some shadow of discomfort. Carmen sighed gently and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. "I'm sure it'll be fine."

This was the first long trip that Carmen and Mort were taking since… since Cape Cod, Carmen recalled with a small smile. That had been years ago, before they'd split up. Actually, they had first split up in Boston, during that trip, but she still remembered the beginning of their adventure there with fondness. She drew her knees up so her feet rested on the edge of the seat - she'd discarded her shoes a good while ago and they had since slid somewhere under her seat - and contented herself to quietly look out the window. Mort glanced over at her from time to time, a lopsided grin coming onto his face with every passing look.

"Babe?"

"Hm?"

"Are you sure you're okay with using your journal for my story?" he asked suddenly, so abruptly that Carmen's attention was effectively jerked away from the beautiful scenery.

"Of course I'm okay," she said with a confused smile. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because it's about him. Because you might want to keep stuff about him private and -"

"Shooter. His name was John Shooter, he was my father, and he can't do anything to us anymore," Carmen said resolutely, with a certain braveness to her tone that Mort had to admit her loved about her. His fiancee was stubborn. She was set in her ways. But, Mort could never deny, she was daring. She was practically fearless if you asked him. She reached out and squeezed his hand which was resting on the gear shifter and smiled.

"Well, you know. It's your story. I don't want you to think that I -"

"-stole it?" Carmen supplied, raising an eyebrow gently. "We're getting married, Mort. My story is your story. None of that needs to be separate anymore. I don't want it to be."

_My story is your story_. Visibly relieved by such a simple statement, Mort smiled, and the pair enjoyed the remainder of the drive in relative quiet. He admittedly found it a little amazing how quickly they had rebuilt everything - even after two years of absolutely no contact, they had managed within a matter of months to find a place of balance, a point at which there was no reason to question the stability of their soon-to-be marriage.

Carmen had again fallen asleep by the time Mort pulled up in front of his old family home, where his mother now lived alone since his father's passing. Leonora Rainey, as it turned out, was already sitting on the porch and waving at Mort's car as it came up the street. Parking in the wide open driveway, Mort stepped out first to greet her.

"Hi, Ma -"

"You go years without visiting, _months_ without calling, and the best you can give me is a '_Hi Ma_'? C'mere," she said, wrapping her arms around her son and hugging him with surprising strength - Mort felt surprisingly glad that Carmen was asleep for this. Perhaps, he realized, the fact that he never grew acclimated to the idea of being an adult, getting a real job, doing what other adults do, was in part due to the fact that his mother certainly didn't see him as an adult.

"I'm here now, aren't I?" he chuckled weakly as his mother pulled back from the embrace. "Carmen just dozed off because the roads were a little slick. First rain and all - we were driving a little slow -"

"Well, don't _wake_ the poor thing."

"She asked me to wake her up the moment we pulled into the state, she might already get on my case for being late," Mort smirked. "But Ma - she's been really excited, and really nervous, so…"

_Tone it down a little_, Mort had wanted to say. But he had brought Carmen here to meet his family, and mid-sentence, he realized that she might as well get used to it now if she was going to be part of it. He held up his index finger to signal for his mother to wait a moment while he traipsed back down the driveway and pulled open the passenger-side door. Giving Carmen's shoulder a brief shake, he laughed when her brow wrinkled and she mumbled a few unintelligible syllables. Leonora laughed as well - and at the sound of another person's laughter, Carmen's eyes flew open, and, as she noticed they had come to a stop, she undid her seatbelt and leapt to her feet outside of the car.

"Hi - I'm Carmen," she said, sparing Mort a brief glance that suggested he was in for an earful later. Carmen smoothed out her hair and scurried up the driveway and held out her hand to Leonora. "It's really nice to -"

But before she could finish her sentence, Leonora had already enveloped her in a hug as well - a tight, genuine bear hug that Carmen couldn't help but return, even though hesitantly. Leonora finally pulled back and placed her hands on Carmen's shoulders, appraising her briefly before looking back at Mort who had just come back up the driveway with a couple of their bags.

"She's a darling," Leonora said warmly. "You two get inside before the rain starts up again."

Leonora Rainey got straight to work making coffee and sandwiches for the pair, excited apparently to have company around while simultaneously getting a feel for her soon-to-be daughter-in-law.

"I'm just so happy that Mort's found someone who makes him happy," she said, placing a cup of coffee in front of Carmen and sitting next to her at the kitchen table so that Leonora was effectively sandwiched between the two. "He told me that you had a bit of a falling out for a while -"

"Ma."

" - but it looks like everything's fallen right back into place, hasn't it?" she said with a bright smile as Carmen raised the coffee mug to her lips, hoping to conceal the flush that had risen into her cheeks. "So, when's the wedding?"

"Well," Carmen said, looking upwards in thought. "You know, to be honest, we haven't done much planning yet. There's just been so much going on with work, and -"

"You mean, you don't have any details at all?" Leonora said, her eyes wide and piteous as though Carmen had just said that she'd been starved and raised in an attic. Once Carmen put down her coffee mug, Leonora reached out for both of her hands, squeezing them tightly. "You must be frazzled to death - but don't worry. I'll help get you two back on track. You could have it here!" she said brightly, which caused Mort to choke slightly on the bite of sandwich he had taken. Why, he wondered, did his mother always have the uncanny ability to make him feel like an embarrassed twelve-year-old?

"There's the old church down the road where Mort's father and I were married - you should take a look there," Leonora said with such excitement that Carmen almost had no choice but to mirror it - and it was in that moment that Mort realized that despite whatever her own wishes had been, Carmen had already conceded to his mother's wishes to have their wedding in Maine. "Riverside Trinity - it's small, but it's just _perfect_."

"I'd love to see it! Just down the road?" Carmen said with a warm smile, and while it seemed to warm Leonora Rainey's heart to the point of near-combustion, Mort fought the internal urge to grimace. Carmen was such a people-pleaser, and he knew that - but he didn't expect it to carry over to _their_ wedding plans. However, he allowed his mother to chatter with his fiancee for a few moments before Mort found himself being pulled out of his seat and shooed away.

"You didn't need to agree to that," Mort said, crossing his arms over himself as he and Carmen walked down the small road to the church. "You could've said no and that we had other plans in mind. I could've handled it."

"I want your mother to _like_ me," Carmen replied. "And besides - I don't have that many people I'm inviting. You do, and they're mostly from _here_. It makes sense. We said we wanted to be practical about this, didn't we?"

For all of her fire and spunk, there were times that Carmen was so accommodating that it could be infuriating - whether it was what to have for dinner, or now, where they were going to get married, it was nearly inevitable that her answer would be whatever was best for everyone else. Even worse, she never brought it up again, not begrudgingly, not jokingly, not ever. Instead, Mort remembered every instance of his own volition and felt bad for it yet again. Not this time. He refused to feel bad about their wedding. Even if she was set on accommodating everyone else on location, there was one part of the wedding in which he could give her exactly what she wanted, and she would have no excuse to veto.

"We'll still have Bayside Betty's cater the reception."

Mort smirked triumphantly at the grin that crossed his fiancée's face at this, and he knew that he'd won a round, at least this time. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders with a slightly triumphant grin as they walked down the road to the small church down the way his mother had suggested - an unassuming white chapel with bells and wooden doors, the likes of which city slickers like Carmen obviously had never been properly acquainted with. She gripped Mort's hand tightly and grinned with excitement.

"Can we go inside?" she said, giving his arm a slight shake - Mort chuckled, and nodded towards the door. He knew his mother would love Carmen even more than she already did when she saw the reverence with which Carmen approached the old church - it was empty for now, as it often was on days except for Sundays. People usually came in and out to light candles and say prayers, but didn't linger.

As they entered, Mort realized with admitted surprise that Carmen was genuinely _in love_ with the small church - the way her eyes glinted in the light tinted through the stained glass was the same expression he'd seen when he'd first taken her up into the trees by Tashmore Lake. He placed a hand on her shoulder to get her attention, and she turned back with an unusually serene smile, which cemented the conclusion that she had found _the_ place she wanted to get married.

"_Well, Morton Rainey…_"

They turned immediately to face the source of a voice that interrupted their moment, and found that a third person - a slightly older woman with familiar cornsilk blonde hair - had entered the small church as well, approaching Mort with strange familiarity. "The Adlers said they saw you pull up at your old house, but I didn't believe 'em - I never thought I'd see _your_ face in town again!"

The blonde woman was smiling, but something about it seemed adamantly false when her eyes fell on Carmen, who immediately felt an unsettling but unconfirmed recognition of the woman. Mort's arm discreetly but protectively snaked around Carmen's shoulders as they withstood the woman's misplaced smile.

"_Babe_," Mort said, his pronunciation sharp and deliberate. "This is Claire. Claire Scaletti."

_Scaletti_, Carmen mulled over in her head a moment. Amy's maiden name. She instantly realized that the woman's appraising glance would _inevitably_ be one of bitterness and loathing; Mort's grip around her shoulders tightened as he felt her posture shrink a little, a show of shame that surprised him.

"So," Claire said with a tinny, audibly forced laugh. "This is your upgrade, Morton?"

"It's - it's a pleasure to meet you," Carmen said, holding her hand out hesitantly. Mort only barely kept from wincing at his fiancée's attempts to make this experience any less terrible. Nothing could make an interaction with Claire Scaletti _less_ terrible.

"Well. I wish I could say the same," Claire said, gently raising an eyebrow and refusing to shake Carmen's hand, which Carmen quickly withdrew to spare herself further humiliation. Claire, however, continued, completely unfazed and unencumbered by the fact that she was in a church, of all places. "So, looking at churches, I see. Good of you to want to do things right the _second_ time around, Morton -"

"Yes, well, I figure that's what Ted was planning for Amy - a nice church wedding, don't you think?" Mort asked with a pointed smirk. "They were so excited planning their life together, they forgot the little tiny detail that she was married to _me_ still - those hooligans."

At this brief impasse, the snaps in emotion were visible - Mort quickly shifted from awkwardness to boldness, Carmen from friendliness to discomfort… and Claire from condescension to well-concealed rage.

"Still sensitive as ever I see - never could take a joke," Claire chuckled quietly, shaking her head. "I hear your mother has a get-together going on this evening for her retirement. I think our invitation was lost in the mail. But," Claire grinned slyly, "I'll see you both there?"

"Of course," Carmen said, groping for some semblance of civility in their interaction. In the world she functioned in, after all, you pretended you liked someone until you couldn't pretend anymore. That was business. That was tact. That was not, however, the way things worked in these small towns. "We'll see you there."

At that, Mort mumbled a few trite niceties before tugging Carmen out of the church, heading back down the street towards home. Once they had gotten away from the church and, more importantly, from Claire, he groaned and shook his head, stepping ahead of Carmen and placing his hands on her shoulders.

"I think you should've let me handle that."

"We were in a _church_ -"

"Obviously, the church needs an upgrade, because that woman stepped into it without catching on fire," Mort said, raising his eyebrows. "The Scalettis are crazy, that's why I wanted to badly to move away from here when I - when Amy and I got married." Mort immediately felt terrible at the need to bring up Amy in order to explain any of this, but he'd known that the topic of his ex-wife would come up when they came back to his hometown. _Her_ hometown as well.

"You know how I told you about Amy always saying she - had weird little _feelings_?" he continued, letting go of Carmen and running his hands through his hair. "That didn't come out of nowhere. The Scalettis were always into all of that… cursing, voodoo mumbo jumbo -"

"We're hardly in a position to be calling it _mumbo jumbo_," Carmen pointed out. Mort paused and nodded in concession. That _voodoo mumbo jumbo_ was the reason Shooter became a part of their lives. But that was different, Mort truly believed.

"It's _usually_ fake," he corrected. "The Scalettis fall into _that_ category. It's all in their heads. And you just _invited _them into our lives like vampires instead of nipping it in the bud. You don't even understand how -"

"I'm _sure_ they just want some closure," Carmen interrupted, holding up a hand to cease Mort's tirade. "And if putting up with uncomfortable questions for a while gets us a little closer to that, then we can deal, can't we?"

_No. No, we can't_, Mort wanted to say. He wanted to say that he couldn't - he didn't _want to_ deal with the Scalettis. But when Carmen was set on trying to make amends with someone, he knew arguing was no good until peace talks completely went up in smoke. And with the Scalettis, Mort knew that would not take long.


End file.
